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Tribeca in the 1980s

A couple of months ago, I asked readers for old photos of Tribeca—and several of you responded. I’ve been meaning to ask again before posting them—and I promise I will follow up on that—but then I saw on Twitter that Yvonne Babineaux had uploaded a batch of vintage Tribeca photos on Flickr. “The pics are from between 1983 and 1990,” she emailed after I begged for her permission to run them here. “Most were probably taken in 1988, because some of them have a stamp on the back from the developer. They’re no later than 1991, because I moved away then.” When I asked if she lived in Tribeca at the time, she said that she grew up in the Bronx, before moving to Hells Kitchen and then the East Village, and now she lives upstate. “I kinda had loads of time back then. I didn’t have a job—well, not any real type of job to tie me down.”

Click on each photo below to enlarge it. You’ll also see any location information that Yvonne (or I) came up with. (I had to allow the photos to be slightly too big for the page—a long way of saying I know it looks crappy but it’s worth it.) If you know where a photo was shot, send me the details (including the photo title) at tribecacitizen@gmail.com. Actually, you can also comment on the photo, too.

And do send any old photos you might have!

And thanks again, Yvonne! I guarantee that you’ll have tickled many folks’ fancy around here.

P.S. Can you believe how empty it was?

P.P.S. Maybe I’ll work up a few then-and-now comparisons…. Stay tuned….

Note: Comments have been turned off due to spam; if you want to add one, email tribecacitizen@gmail.com and they’ll be turned on again.

60 Comments

Fantastic! Thank you for posting these photos and thank you to Yvonne for providing them.
Desolate is a kind word of description.
These photos make me shake my head in wonder at those who speak fondly of the 70’s and 80’s as the ‘glory’ days of Tribeca; before it was ‘ruined’ by renovation, restoration and the introduction of amenities like grocery stores.

Andrea-
My parents moved from Chelsea to Tribeca in 1974. They moved into IPN 40 Harrison 30K. I grew up in Tribeca. My grandfather own a candy store called “Bettys” on the corner of Greenwich and Reade. I am a 3rd generation Manhattanite. We were all born in St. Vincent’s Hospital. It’s gone. We were all there in Tribeca on Greenwich ON 9/11. Where were you? What you see in those photos are THE GLORY DAYS of the TRIangle BElow CAnal. Yes, before it was ruined by renovations and transplants that claim it as their own and act like they’ve been there forever. A false sense of ownership. Back in the ’80’s and ’90’s – Tribeca was desolate- especially on the weekends when the work crowds went home for the weekends. It allowed us to play football in the street. As kids it was like living in a suburb. It was quiet – we had the parks to ourselves. PS 234 was under enrolled. We knew everyone and everyone knew us… we were safe. We were private. No one knew of this triangle of families and friendship. It used to be our playground. But in the early ’90’s DeNiro created the Film Center and Nobu etc. and things started to change a little but after 9/11 people from all over the world came in droves and STAYED?! Why? Bad air quality – bad memories!! They stayed, they moved it. New York built residential buildings in all the parking lots we used to play in – The population doubled, tripled. They opened more schools. There was a waiting list for PS 234. In 2005 – the Mitchell-Llama program that had provided rent substudies for the middle class went away and IPN was bought privately by Lawrence Gluck. Rents were hiked to fair market and those who couldn’t afford it had to move out after 25 years. Moving trucks were parked along those cobble stone streets and my friends, my family that I lived with all of my life were leaving in droves. Moving to PA, FL, NJ. The people who had money came in and took over the apts. that were homes to some many people that I loved. It’s hard not to resent the new wave. It’s hard not to look back on those quiet weekends when my mom used to have to go to SOHO for Milk. It’s not easy not being able to afford to live near your elderly parents. I personally moved to LA. So next time – speak to a REAL NEW YORKER before using a pointed statement like ‘the GLORY’ days. They were glorious – in every way.

I owned (with my ex) Manhattan South 1983-85 on Hubert. We lived in the INP dog bldg (beautiful Akita). Those were the days. Standing on Greenwich and yelling up to my friend’s loft to throw down the key.

I don’t speak of the 70s here as the “glory days” but I did enjoy living among ruins in a peaceful, quiet place that no one really wanted or cared about. Just my personal inclination, though in many ways it felt liberated by possibilities where it now feels constrained by certainties. I have no objection to orderliness, but you may understand a preference for feeling as if one is reigning over nothing to the feeling that one is sharing space with treasures from which they’re forever excluded. Although I’m not given to wistfulness, that period in this place did possess unique virtues.

Andrea, unfortunately most of us who lived there back then can’t afford to live there anymore. So there’s one very good reason to be wistful.

Beyond that, the community of artists, musicians and creatives that defined the hood is long gone. Independence Plaza, the one bulwark against gentrification, is now a luxury building and the old timers are being pushed out. The great nightclubs are closed. Affordable, welcoming neighborhood places like Yaffa’s and Riverrun are replaced by cold, expensive ones. And by the mid-80s, there were already plenty of grocery stores and amenities. If you count mostly empty luxury furniture shops as amenities, you’re right, we didn’t have any of those back then.

@Dick: You’ll be happy to hear, perhaps, that I’m working on adding slideshow functionality; in the meantime, I hope you didn’t hurt yourself with all that clicking. As for your word choices, there’s something my mama used to say that seems relevant: Just because you can be an entitled schmuck doesn’t mean you HAVE to be.

Alex G, I completely understand that when things change we become wistful for the past – it’s human nature and we all do it. As social animals we all like to be part of a community and are saddened when our community dissipates.

This also relates to Independence Plaza, which was not built as a ‘bulwark against gentification’; it was built to house office workers for the World Trade Center complex. They failed, as such, because people preferred to live in their communities and commute to work. Let me know when the perfect, affordable, convenient neighbourhood exists.

Again – Andrea – so WRONG. IPN was not built for the WTC workers. LOL! Where did you get that from. Check it out – if you want a real lesson on IPN – I can send you physically to some originals including my mom and dad who are still living at IPN. And they will school you a bit… Where are you from? Where was your playground?

Elizabeth, Andrea is correct. IPN was first built as market-rate housing. I know this because my family and I were among the original tenants and someone at the rental office told us this fact. If it had been built as Mitchell-Lama housing, I doubt the IPN buildings would have had terraces and a swimming pool.

hi. as someone who has lived in ipn since ’84, i feel compelled to comment. nyc is constantly evolving and tribeca has a particularly rich history. i’m sure that the inhabitants of previous generations have their grievances, too. tribeca may be cleaner, prettier and safer today but it is a much blander and much less interesting place to live in than it was when i arrived here.

a lot of the ex-ipn residents have reason to be resentful. gluck used every tactic including putting hpd executives on his payroll to get rid of the long time residents. for example, a mentally ill man on my floor was tormented by fraudulent legal notices after his father’s death from gluck’s legal team. he eventually moved out rather than fight the harassment. multiply that by 1000 and you have an idea what happened at ipn ten years ago. it cost me thousands and many sleepless nights to keep my apartment but i’m a tougher s.o.b. than gluck.

another part of the ipn legacy that has been swept under the rug is that the ipn tenants association pleaded with the bloomberg administration to be considered for the low cost federal liberty bonds made available after 9/11. the building was still a mitchell-lama rental and we wanted to explore going condo and using the bonds to finance the buyout. the mayor’s office refused to even meet with the tenants association. the liberty bonds were used instead to finance the high end development in battery park.

Oh Andrea give it up. IPN wasn’t built for the workers of the WTC. It was built for upper middle income individuals. I came to TriBeCa in the early 80’s and it was great. Hip, quiet, cool music joints. One isn’t merely wistful because it is the past rather we are wistful because it was such a great downtown neighborhood. Let us wear our sad sack shirts – we aren’t hurting anybody and we are completely out #’ed now.

I heard a “new” mom who lives on No Moore Street tell me that when her mother called after the midnight celebrations of the killing of Bin Laden at the WTC and she was worried about her daughter say, “oh Mom, nobody cares about that stuff down here anymore!” Ah, if she only knew…..

WHAT?! I’m flying off the handle… Lisa!!! We all care about it. I care about it every Thursday morning for the past 9 years while I sit in my therapists office and try to find ways to stop having the recurring nightmares of me driving down Harrison St. and its raining and a body falls onto my windshield. I guess seeing 3,000 people get slaughtered in the sky is something others don’t think about anymore. I guess the people I knew, personally, that I saw jump from the windows of Cantor-Fitzgerald are fly by memories. I don’t even visit Tribeca anymore. I can’t – I have to not be suffering from the PTSD that has changed my life. Andrea – you are from another country hence – the spelling of “neighbourhood” – the “U” gives you away. Maybe go back. We spell it “neighborhood” in America. And Tribeca WAS the affordable, convenient neighborhood that we used to occupy. Do you sleep well at night? I have a feeling you do.

IPN was not built for WTC workers. It was conceived as a fancy” apartment complex during the sweeping urban renewal project that forced the move of most of the Washington Market up to Hunts Point. The fancy folks didn’t want to move to such a “desolate” neighborhood, and the developers obtained Mitchel-Lama subsidies. We, the hoi polloi pioneers, moved into the desolate neighborhood and helped create the neighborhood it is now. There were no schools, no supermarkets, no upscale restaurants (unless you count Magoos and Barnabas Rex). It was safe, convivial and exciting to be part of an incipient community. Thanks to Mitchel-Lama, this pioneer was able to benefit from the efforts of the efforts of the 70’s and 80’s and raise a child here. But too many have been forced out. As far as the desolate appearance is concerned, apart from the ill-conceived heavy hand of urban renewal, NYC was reeling from financial crisis. BMCC remained a rusting skeleton for years before it could be completed. But I could go on and on…people look fondly on those days in part because the contrast between the rich and the not-rich was not so palpable.

Salute to TriBeCa!! Thank you to the person who took these pictures and captured TriBeCa before it became what it is today. There is a large group of individuals who I call family that mainly lived in IPN (Independence Plaza North ). I was there from 1979 to 1989 and always visited TriBeCa after that. There are so many stories that I could share from the sand dunes to walking to the Twin Towers and playing in there before we got kicked out, playing games like manhunt and stick ball to so much more. Before DeNiro thought of opening his restaurant there we were there, no matter what part of the world we may be in now TriBeCa will always be our home and our bond. To those with the crazy comments it’s cool you wouldn’t understand unless you were there.
Peace!

I moved to the neighborhood in 1976 and it was fabulous! Clearly if one wasn’t here they wouldn’t know. It was full of young, creative people, all with huge, interesting spaces to create and play in. I had almost 4000 sq.ft. for about $400/mo. We could afford a quality of life that isn’t possible anymore. The world has changed in general and just as one might look back at the spirit of the late 60’s and early 70’s as a special time, so it was down here as well. I can’t complain about the changes as it’s still a very special place but the soul it had is quite faded. Calling the area “desolate” because of these photos is just lacking in imagination – which is perhaps the one thing we have lost the most of since then.
BTW, Dick, you can click on the flicker link (“vintage Tribeca photos” highlighted in blue) and see the photos as a fluid series. Maybe you should have figured that out yourself.

Hi, I am Yvonne, I took those pictures. I just wanted to say why the pictures seem to look desolate. I took most of my pics during the early morning hours, and mostly on Sundays. Quite a few were taken in the winter when it was at it’s coldest. I don’t want to sound mean or nasty but I didn’t want people in my pics, I just wanted the buildings and I would wait till I got a clear shot. I would say that I liked NYC back in those days just for the reason that those were the days I lived there and had fun there. I lived in Baltimore for years after I lived in NYC and will probably have fond memories of Baltimore mainly cause I lived there.

I too was here in the 70’s when Washington Market as it was called then was a wonderful neighborhood to live in with like minded folk being creative in many ways. I used to park my car in the empty lot which is now Washington Market Park when visiting my brother on Duane St. in the early 70s & then, when I too moved here in the late 70’s my pickup truck was always parked along the empty lots which is now the Citi/Travelers buildings. What is now the Food Emporium was the Washington Market School with a wall of windows facing the park which eventually was walled up for the supermarket. IPN had a big banner or painting on the south wall saying something like move here & walk to work in Wall St., yes it was built for high income families but none came & so Mitchell Lama took it over, moved in welfare families & middle income families & charged decent rents with $100 garage monthly fees for those lucky enough to own a car. Then folks started realizing what a find the neighborhood was & things began to change. The sculptor living in the loft above me died & a young lawyer moved in at 6 times the rent & I could hear him every night coming home after the bars closed at 4 with a party of his friends & him saying isn’t this place cool over & over again. We’re still here although a lot of our friends who owned their lofts had to move from the neighborhood because the maintenance fees became unbearable so I guess we are lucky to still be here.

Can anyone tell me the name of the restaurant–sorry, have forgotten everything, including the location–in Tribeca that permitted artists to run a tab, the walls of which were covered in paintings accepted in lieu of payment?

Hey, Tribecca!
I was there with you, during that incredible snowstorm in NYS in ’79 or ’80, completely adrift, looking for a friend of mine from St.Louise, Suellen Epstein, back then before she became famous, I’d come down from Woodstock, another friend, Joan Embre and all her lovely kids (they’d got me reading Dylan Thomas to their school…. I’d got them all into “Under Milk Wood”)
but I’d never found Suellen then, a realshame, everyone else, cops, taxis, corner shop burger joints, everyone,so friendly to a lost welshman…….
eventually I ran out of money, though still with lots of hope and regrets, I went to Kennedy and caught the Freddie Laker home….. I got back with 2pence!
But Good Luck to you’all
I still dream of you. Really do!

Cee – the building was completed in or around 1989, and that lot had been empty since at least the mid-1970s. During my early childhood it was a parking lot, then later a park/garden. There was actually a protest about the site when Smith Barney (the original owners) first laid plans to develop it in the mid-80s. The Tribeca “baby boom” had started in the early 80s and many parents wanted the space to remain a park and to be developed with playgrounds, benches, etc. Needless to say, they lost but I guess the semi-public green space outside the building was a small consolation prize to the losers!

A lot of IPN residents on the north side of 80 N Moore were pretty angry when that building went up – endless uptown views became views of a bunch of desks and conference rooms!

Great letters to compliment great photos. I’ve lived in Tribeca since 1972 when my painter husband found us a floor in an empty shoe warehouse to call home. . We called it “belowHo” then as we couldn’t afford SoHo and drifted further downtown. Rose and Lauren’s comments are especially accurate. I, too, have a wall of ancient photos from the 70s and 80s, mostly of signage and stores now all gone. I call it the grim reaper wall.

Does anyone remember the name of the restaurant on Harrison and Greenwich (South East corner) before The Harrison, before Spartina (they served great chicken with mashed potatoes (with the skin) and collards and catfish)?

Reading the comments and looking at the photos…I hope there are many photos of the area from the past few years..because the way things are closing and being torn down, we will all be wistful again in a few years…

I used to live at 174 Duane St. over a Kosher dairy/egg company; across from the triangular park in the late ’80s. It was indeed quiet down there on the weekends. It was even quiet on weekday nights. Yes, there were late night eating places like Odéon, and Area nightclub, but the doors were closed. We didn’t even hear the multiple subway lines converging into lower Manhattan. David Bouley’s first restaurant was across the street from the little park. I always wondered why all the limos at lunch and dinner. When I saw the $98 prix fixe carte (of course, w/out wine, tax or tip!), I then realized that it was the Goldman Sachs/Wall St. crowd that ate there, because it was 4-star and they could afford it..
I liked the lengthy essay of one of the commentors. I too liked living down there. I could see the Twin Towers from the back window. I worked on Park Ave. just so. of GCT, but I could get from Chambers St. to 42nd, and then shuttle to east side in about 8 minutes. Incredible commute time. All for $1! Anybody remember a restaurant called 211 at W. Broadway and Franklin? I ate there a lot. Then Drew Nieporent opened a quasi-Turkish kind of place in the same spot in the mid-90s, and the food was good also.
2 doors down from me on Duane was a small unassuming building that was gutted and turned into full floor condos. When I saw the sticker price advertised in the NYT Sunday Magazine, starting at $965,000, I was shocked that I would be living so close to people of “means”. Nowadays $965K would buy you a bathroom in a 1-bedroom apartment; living room, bedroom and kitchen not included!!

This photo essay brings back a flood of memories to me from the late ’80s!
I saw Meryl Streep with two little ones in prams (or maybe Sissy Spacek, can’t remember) and Bette Midler occasionally. JKF, Jr. also lived a couple blocks away on Moore St. It felt like a neighborhood, even without the famous people. I suppose that that is all gone now. A pity.
Thanks!

Addendum:
My favorite place was El Teddy’s on West Broadway. The most incredible interior in NY, in my opinion, designed, assembled by the owner. I liked the food, the atmosphere, the staff and customers. The owner wore weird eyeglasses (he owned perhaps 300 pair), and he had those funny moving sculptures under black light in the window. The bar looked liked it had been designed by Gaudi!
First it was zebra on the outside of the building, and later purple, or vice versa. That should have never shut down or the building razed for some billionaire to build some ugly behemoth apartment.
El Teddy’s is forever etched in my memory. I always took out-of-towners to eat there, when they visited me.

I grew up on Franklin St. around the corner from El Teddy’s. That place was so mystical it is forever etched in my childhood brain. You forgot to mention the statue of liberty’s crown, which peaked out behind the restaurant’s facade(I wasn’t old enough to realize it wasn’t actually the statue of liberty behind there, but I was old enough to wonder how she could be in two places at once.)

Remember the mosaic fire hidrent and lamp post out front?
I only ever went in once or twice, but it was beyond wonderland just to live around the corner.

Apparently it started out as just “Teddy’s” and was a money laundering “restaurant” that never cooked anything before it turned into magical Mexican place.

Greenwich and NMoore or Beach is greenwich and Hubert. It is now a salad store.

The business was some kind of night club and the exteriors were used in some commercilas in the 1980s

Area club on Hudson — about a rear or two the tree got knocked down by an errant truck. That was a damn shame that tree always bloomed first in the spring. I went home and told my wife we should move. That tree really killed me.

I lived at 179 Duane street with painter Jiro Naito in the early 70’s till 1975. Next door neighbors were Duka Delight and Paula Longendgyke. Myself as many other young artists worked as art “assistants” to Richard Serra. I also worked for Ralph Humphreys up in Chelsea to supplement my income and painting.
It was an amazing time to be a young artist and especially a women artist in the wave (2nd wave) of feminism. Life was exciting, everything was possible, affordable…and I look back at a time that in many ways was idyllic and romantic and in many ways the Paris ateliers of the 1900’s Tribecca style. We were a community and felt invincible.